I finally managed to hack the blog engine of my new CMS into good enough shape to actually use it to manage a blog. It's still missing a lot of features (like comments, permalinks, Atom feeds, etc.) and I'm sure it's got bugs I don't know about, but it seems to be working. So be sure to check it out.

I've managed to import all the blog posts from the old CMS and my MySpace blog. The MySpace entries seem to have some sort of error related to the post times, but it's on MySpace's end, not mine as the times are off there as well. I think it's got something to do with time zones. (Greenwich Mean Time?) Once I get that figured out, I'll fix it. In the meantime, you can't trust the times (on those entries), sorry.

Still missing is the other half of the CMS system, which handles all the non-blog pages. It shares a lot of the same codebase as the blog engine, so it shouldn't take too long to get working. Until then, you can still find all that content at the old site.

Originally Posted On MySpace

Ok, as promised, my debut single Sunlit Asteroid is now available for downloading. It's free for non-commercial private listening. Contact me for any other usage.

Comments, critiques, scathing putdowns, et cetera, would be greatly appreciated.

I'm gonna see if I can make it my profile music, but I'm not sure if I can. Anyone have any hints?

Originally Posted On MySpace

Well, as I'm sure you've heard, New England was hit pretty hard by an ice storm on Thursday. We got over twenty-four hours of rain while the temp was just below freezing. We lost power at 1:00 Friday morning and it hasn't come back on yet.

We've got a generator and wood furnace heat, so we're not doing too bad. Our land lines are still up and cell service seems to have been uninterrupted, so we've been able to keep in touch and what not. I finally got bored with no 'net access, so I hooked my mom's laptop up to the generator.

The power outage has stopped all my work on my new website (I'd hopped to at least have the blog up by now), so I'm posting this update here. With any luck, I'll get it really up and running by the end of the week.

PSNH reports that there are now only about 175,000 customers out of power; which is a major improvement over the 322,000 reported out on Friday. Our individual feed line is underground, so it's fine. Which means as soon as the local loop is back up, we'll have power. That is better that a lot of folks around here, who've lost their individual lines and may have a very long wait before they get hooked back up.

On a completely different note, I've developed a bit of a new hobby, writing electronic music. I've written my first song and would have posted it on my website by now, if it weren't for the power outage. It's a short ambient trance track I've decided to call "Sunlit Asteroid", based on it's spacy feel and the bright tone of the main melody synths. I'll post it as soon as I get a chance.

In closing, we're doing OK, I hope you are too.

I've got the domain names and their aliases set up, all the redirects worked out and all that other jazz. Therefore, I guess, Studio Karatorian is officially live.

Of course, this current page doesn't have the content of the old site or the bells and whistles of the new site, so it's not of much use to anyone, but at least it's something, right?

The beta site has now gone live and is the main site. (The one you're reading right now, in fact.)

So here you have it. I finally got off my lazy arse and went all official and stuff with my website. I bought hosting and set up a simple Apache install to serve up my existing web content. I'm still working on the new website, which is powered by a custom CMS I've named Black Knight.

As you can see, at the moment, there isn't anything other than the current page to be seen here. I'm not sure if I'll migrate over the whole page, or simply wait until I launch the new site. Also I haven't got my domain names bought or set up, so I don't think anyone other than me even has any chance of seeing this page. (I should have that taken care of by the end of the day.)

Originally Posted On MySpace

Here goes:

The Jessie

You will need:

• diced chicken breast
• cheddar cheese
• chopped sweet onion
• cottage cheese
• oat nut bread
• fresh ground pepper
• seasoning salt
• pure maple sugar
• mayonnaise
• ranch dressing

Instructions:

• Put bread toasting.
• Fry onions and chicken at medium high heat.
• Season liberally with seasoning salt, pepper, and maple sugar.
• Remove bread and apply thin layer of mayo to both slices.
• Cover mayo with thick layer of cottage cheese.
• Place cheddar slices over cottage cheese and apply light coating of ranch dressing.
• Remove chicken (and onions) from heat and spoon onto bread.
• Press two slices together and serve immediately.

And now you all know why I'm not a cook. He he.

I actually decided to name this after a friend of mine. Not that I think she'd like it or that she'd eat it or any of the usual reasons one names a dish after someone. Rather, I was hungry, threw together a bunch of stuff and have been thinking about her a lot tonight (or this morning, however you want to figure it).

So there you go. One unique recipe to add to your collection. That way, whenever you feel your cooking skills are lacking, you can look at it and think, "At least I didn't think of that!" He he he.

Good night, or morning, whatever.

Originally Posted On MySpace

Not really fallen, as in fallen in love. That distinction has only graced two women in the entirety of my life; both of which, are (sadly) it appears, beyond my reach. Rather, I'm infatuated.

I have a bad habit (which has been with me since adolescence, if not earlier) of becoming enamored of a single female (who's usually way out of my league). And, tonight, that (perhaps unfortunate) individual has changed. For well over a year now, the object of my irrational desires has been the younger (too young actually, it's borderline perverted) sister (half sister, actually) of a good friend of mine. But, as happens every once and a while, things have changed.

Her name is Natasha and we only met three weeks ago. I've seen her a few times at Cypress Grove (better know as "The Greeks"), the only real bar in my hometown. I tend to go there on Thursdays as that's karaoke night (trust me, you don't want to hear me sing, but I do anyway). So, tonight, after the karaoke died down and the DJ (and cook, he he) started simply spinning tunes (as tends to happen late at night), we danced together quite a bit (I managed to get my chance as the place was dead), and I fell for her.

I'd previously admired her from afar, and we'd been formally introduced by a mutual friend. She's exactly my type: skinny, brunet, and (I estimate) younger than me.

I think I might actually have a chance with her as we seem to get along well and she thinks I'm "sweet". However, I wonder. Is such baseless attraction bad for one's soul? Do I really have any chance? (Isn't "you're sweet" code for "let's just be friends"?) Should I even be thinking about her at all when the true girl of my dreams is single?

Normally, I'd be too shy to discuss such private matters in such a public forum, but I'm at a strange point in my life, so I do strange things. Any advice youz guyz may offer is much appreciated; Thanks in advance.

Originally Posted On MySpace

So I bought a truck today ('94 Ford Ranger, Super Cab, 4x4) which needs a new windshield. Being the geek that I am (and due to the fact that it's Sunday, so, chances are, nothin's open), I started looking for price quotes on the web. I googled "auto glass" and started going through the results. It was pretty pathetic.

With all the first page search results and all the "sponsored links" (google-speak for text ads), there where nineteen results (not counting overlap between the search and the ads).

Of these results, there where sixteen auto glass companies, two meta price search services, and one irrelevant yellow pages entry for somewhere in California (even Google isn't perfect). I started going from page to page trying to get online quotes.

Of the sixteen companies, I managed to get an automated quote from three of them. Another three or four offered automated quotes, but their websites where broken and when I tried to get a quote, all I got was server errors instead. The rest all wanted me to call them or given them a bunch of personal info so they could call me. Finally, one site was entirely in Flash (which I have, but it's disabled because it seems that pretty much all the Flash content I run into on the web is ads), so I don't know if they had automated quotes (and if they worked) or not.

The two meta search services had (of course) automated quotes, but they failed miserably at the primary purpose of such services, finding the lowest price. None of them could beat the best price I had found. Not only that, they didn't even come close.

Google, however, seems to have it's shit together (as usual). The first search result had a working online quote system and provided the lowest price!

Perhaps it's just because windshield replacement is a relatively low tech industry, but it seems to me that a lot of companies out there simply don't understand the modern internet. Especially all the ones that want me to call them for a quote. Hello! If I wanted to call someone, I'd be looking in the phone book, not online.

OK, so I guess this is probably just a pointless rant, but hey, stuff like this annoys me and I feel the need to bitch.

Originally Posted On MySpace

I suppose it's uber geeky, but last night, I just completed the first part of an extensive MySpace profile style edit. I'd been meaning to do so ever since I styled my MySpace blog with a look based on the old look that used to be on my personal website. (Which was months ago.)

So now that I've gotten around to it, I think it looks pretty good. Ok, so the pink may not be to everyone's (anyone's?) taste, but I think the layout came out pretty well. I've still got a lot of stuff to do, mostly with minor positioning details, but I figured the progress I've made so far is ready for public consumption.

Let me tell you, tweaking your profile's CSS by hand is a major pain. I know CSS well enough that the actual styling wasn't hard. Rather, it was dealing with all of MySpace's defaults that was tiresome. The style information is spread out all over the place, in what is the worst coded HTML I've ever had to deal with.

Much of the style information is in three linked stylesheets, but that's actually just the beginning. There is also style information embedded in the page in random style elements and the style attributes of various elements. In addition to the CSS, the page layout is dependant of a raft of hard coded use of depreciated HTML presentation elements and attributes. Finding out exactly where a given element is getting it's style information is like some kind of deranged scavenger hunt. Without Firefox's excellent DOM Inspector tool, I'm not sure I'd have been able to manage.

In addition to all of that, the entire page is table based layout gone bananas. As a new school web designer, I'm not a fan of table based layouts anyway, but this is crazy. The entire profile is made up of nested tables, sometimes five levels deep. Additionally, even if you where to stick to table abuse (for whatever reason), many of the tables are entirely unneeded and wasteful.

Another thing that makes working with the profile style bothersome is that while many of the elements have classes (many of which should actually be ids), a lot of what you'd want to style doesn't. This means you have to resort to complex selectors and then apply a second rule to override the cases where these selectors end up being overly broad.

Finally, once you've gotten past all that, the way in which you have to put the CSS on your profile is obnoxious as well. For starters, unlike their blog customization, MySpace doesn't have a profile section dedicated to CSS styling, so you have to just plunk it in somewhere random. (I used the About Me section.) Additionally, they feel compelled to HTML escape the hash character, which breaks any rules using ids. Why they choose to do this I have know idea. It's not required and is simply a waste of storage space and bandwidth. This "feature" required me to rewrite a large number of my style rules to work around it.

Finally, as I was trying to work around the hash escaping, I discovered a few other annoyances. They filter out link tags and the CSS @import rule. (I had to resort to a hack just to mention it in this post.) This means that you can only put CSS inline in the page. Which is dumb, because that's not a recommended web design practice nowadays.

Despite all of that, I actually enjoyed tweaking my profile's look and feel. What can I say? I'm a hacker at heart.

Originally Posted On MySpace

Normally, I'd write this down in my private journal (which is offline), but I figured, if I'm gonna actually update my blog on a regular basis (fat chance of that), I'll have to actually write something once in a while; so here goes:

Every Thursday night is karaoke night at the local bar. I occasionally sing (badly, but isn't that the point), but that's not what this entry is about. Once the singing dies down (it doesn't take long in a small town), the local DJ (who also works in the kitchen, he he he), spins relatively uptempo dance and or rap music and the dance floor (really just a section of the usual bar floor with the tables pushed aside), tends to be fairly active, mostly with college girls (from FPU, the local university). As I love to dance, I get out there and do my thing.

However, I've come to realize something. Rindge is a small town and, as such, is behind the times. When I dance, I tend to liquid (and mix in my own moves, which you don't want to see, I promise you). Anyway, liquiding is a style of dancing that comes from the club and rave scene. Over the course of a number of buzzed Thursday nights, I've realized something: nobody in Rindge has seen it before. I can tell by the reaction I get when I do it. Most people give me funny looks, like they're thinking "what the hell is he doing?", while a select groups of others appear to be intrigued. Nevertheless, I've never seen anyone else doing it.

(For those that don't know,) Liquiding is a strange sort of dance that involves rotating one's hands and/or arms around one another. It's really energizing and nicely compliments the theta wave trance induced by hight BMP (beats per minuet) music common in the club scene. As such, I don't really care what it looks like, because it feels great.

Anyway, I'm sure that the real club scene has moved on to bigger and (perhaps) better things. Furthermore, as I've had little occasion to spend much time on the dance floor of a modern club, I'd estimate I'm seven to ten years behind the current "scene".

However, despite that, I seem to be lightyears ahead of the rest of this sleepy New Hampshire town. In fact, tonight I actually had a chick ask me to to teach her my moves. As if they where "my moves", as if they weren't already old hat to anyone who was actually hip to the times. Of course, I obliged (she was cute, what can I say?), but I don't think I made much of an impact, really. The strangest part is that a lot of my fellow patrons are college students, (many of which are from fairly large cities), who ought to know what's up.

Add to all of the above that the DJ doesn't appear to have anything over 160 BPM and it's almost depressing. I asked if he had Sandstorm, the quintissencial trance anthem and he didn't. Now, I imagine most real DJs (i.e. those with turntables) wouldn't play that track because it's been done to death, but I'm not sure he even knew what I was talking about.

On the other tentacle, this does have it's advantages: Random hot women decide to dance with me. Why? I couldn't tell you. I'm not much too look at and other than my superbly thin figure (which isn't really that advantageous for a male), I've not got a whole lot going for me in the physical department. They quickly give it up when they realize I can't really dance that well. Whatever, it's amusing while it lasts. Perhaps it's for the best, because as far as I can tell, you can't liquid while bumping uglies. (If I'm wrong and you actually can, please tell me how, because, as Snoop Dogg would put it, that would be the "shiznit".)

Another funny thing happened to me on the dancefloor (if can really call it that) tonight. Some dude told me to "back off [his] girlfriend". I found this hilarious because we'd been grinding off and on all night and it had always been her idea. I laughed and told him: "If you wanna' throw down, I'll throw down, but she's been hittin' on me all night." He didn't respond. Ha ha.

Anyway, goodnight y'all, and remember, the dancefloor of a small town is a really strange place to be =_=